Thursday, January 26, 2006

Thank God For Global Waming

It's up to 45° Farenheit. In January. In Minneapolis.

Hurrah!

Recently, I noticed something called Hoodwinked! was big at the box office. Having no idea, I googled it and found the plot summarized as:

Little Red Riding Hood: A classic story, but there's more to every tale than meets the eye. Before you judge a book by its cover, you've got to flip through the pages. For this story, we begin at the end. Furry and feathered cops from the animal world investigate a domestic disturbance at Granny's cottage, involving a girl, a wolf, and an axe. The charges are many: breaking and entering, disturbing the peace, intent to eat, and wielding an axe without a license. Not to mention, this case might be tied to the elusive "Goody Bandit" who has been stealing the recipes of goody shops everywhere.

It sounded worth taking a chance on, so yesterday K. and I went to see it. It was hilarious. Much better than I'd hoped for. Go see it. I don't want to say more, because I don't want to ruin the surprises, but it reminds me of Airplane: the kind of thing where you want to recite nearly every line. It's all around excellent.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Excitement at Casa St. Onge

We were going to go to the movies, but instead, we stayed home and caught up on telvision. Ya know, I'm not sure I can stand this high-pressure environment.

In other big news, we're eating lots of microwave popcorn. It's something both our stomachs will handle without problems. Right at the moment, we have maybe six to eight varieties, as we try out various flavors.

Oh, and I'm married, and coming up soon on my twentieth anniversary of living with K. Something I didn't expect when I moved in with her. "It's better to be lucky than good," and I got real lucky with her.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Booooooooring

I'm downloading software, and it's taking hours. I wanna go to sleep, but I'm staying up to watch this process unfold. *Grump*

Oh well, it was cheap. But I wonder how it would have worked for someone with a dial-up modem? Especially one where they took you off line periodically, to give other people a chance to use it. I had one of them, once.

DEMOCRATIC You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

SOCIALIST You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION You have two cows. They go into hiding. They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION You have one cow. The cow is schizophrenic. Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish. The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow. The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk. The cow asks permission to be cut in half. The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION You have millions of cows. They make real California cheese. Only five speak English. Most are illegals. Arnold likes the ones with the big uddersHat tip Paul T

ok guys, I want one on Iran..........this should be good

From Lawhawk

New Orleans Cows: You have two cows. They're both made of chocolate and need life preservers.

Taliban cows: You have two cows. Both are covered head to toe in a burka and are fearful of making milk for fear of being 'tipped.'

Iranian cows: There are no Iranian cows. If there are Iranian cows, they're being used for peaceful purposes. If they're not being used for peaceful purposes, they're being used as per our right as a sovereign right. And as our sovereign right, we intend to use the cows on you at our earliest possible convenience.

Reader Barry D;

Canadian. You have a perfectly nice great white cow and your neighbor to the south has a big brown, black and white cow. You brag that your cow is really better even if smaller because it gets free state supplied veterinary service and its milk is always cold (but that's because the cow waited in line outside for eight months to see the vet). You complain about the oppressiveness of your nieghbor's colorful cow and how you'd never want a cow like that. You create comedy shows about your nieghbor's cow and send Canadian farmers to be news readers on their TV programs. You stomp your feet. Then, you throw some black and brown paint on your cow and fatten it up.

Reader Larson casts pearls,

Iranian Corporation You have a herd of cows which makes a lot of money due to the high price of milk. You spend it all to research mad cow disease for 'peaceful purposes.' In the meantime, all of your smartest and most productive cows have moved to Los Angeles.

Liberal University Think Tank You have two cows. You spend all of your time discussing 'the nature of cowness' and conclude that a cow is a 'construct' of the patriarchal and racist society that oppresses us all. While participating in the 'discourse' you neglected to feed your cows and both died. You blame George W. Bush.

Space Pragnatism is most clever here;

Space Cows

NASAYou have one cow.The cow just runs around in circles in the field.You miss your old cow.You can't rely on any other farmers (because farming is just too hard)You retire your cow, dig up your old cows bones and wrap it in new leather.

Alt SpaceYou have fifty cow designsAny one of your cows would put out 50 times the milk of government cowsIf only you had money...

(I admit they may be a bit arcane. But to somebody in the space business like me, and also a regular reader of space blogs, this is pretty hilarious. And ever so true.)

Capital Punishment

Though capital punishment is very controversial, I think we can all agree with this:

[John Derbyshire] I favor the death penalty, preferably by some slow, gruesome, and excruciating method, for the maufacturers and users of that type of padded envelope that, if you tear it open, showers you, your clothes, your furniture, and your lunchtime sandwich with fibrous gray stuffing. If anyone starts a petition, I'll sign it.

"Fantastic Four," "Constantine," "The Legend of Zorro," "Bewitched," "Guess Who?," and "Monster-In-Law" were all seen by the residents of Casa St. Onge, and at least mildly enjoyed. I wouldn't classify any as great cinematic art, but "Constantine" and "Bewitched" were good, in my arrogant opinion, "Guess Who?" was fair, and the others weren't terrible enough to be on a worst list, even if you didn't like them.

Sometimes, I think "critic" is a job that should have mandatory retirement after 10 years.

What's it like to be a writer?

The following was posted on the Baen's Bar bulleting board by author John Ringo, who's struggling with writer's block at the moment:

So, for reasons found elsewhere, I've been looking at Con websites. And out of interest I scanned a couple of writer bios.

Now, I've seen a bunch of bios. "Peter Moviemaker was born in Detroit, MI in 1946, six months to the day after his Dad got back from four years overseas in the Big Red One. He's been in a hurry ever since..." But there seems to be a trend towards "chatty" bios. "Hi, I'm Alice Waterfeld. I'm sitting here on my porch writing this and thinking about the wonderful people who are reading about me and just thrilled to death to be talking to you through this medium..."

So the little voice started. Now, psychotics call this the "inner narrator" and when the inner narrator starts talking, the nice guys in white coats give them drugs. But I'm an author, so I call it the muse and people give me money instead of drugs...

So the inner narrator started telling me I should do a chatty bio, people seem to like that...

IN: "You should do a chatty bio. People seem to like that."

Real Me: "How do you know? I mean, they're on the website but that doesn't mean people like them. I was personally bored to tears. What's wrong with 250 words or less? Do I really have to know that their cat recently died of syphilis?"

IN: It's the thing, man, do a chatty bio.

RM: I don't know how. All I know is second person. "John Ringo was born in 1963 in "Miami-Dade" county."

IN: That's third person. And quit writing in declarative sentences all the time. You're trying to sound like Hemingway.

RM: What the fuck ever. Like I know that shit. Hell, if I don't know that shit, you don't know that shit, so shut the fuck up.

IN: Come on, do a chatty bio. I'll ask the questions and you give the answers. Here we go: So, John, where you from?

RM: No where. I've never lived anywhere long enough to be _from_ anywhere. You know that, why the stupid question?

IN: Feeling snippy today, are we?

RM: Of COURSE I'm feeling snippy! I keep asking you what the fuck happens next in Ghost IV and you keep asking me about "where are you from? Who influenced you in your writing? What is a word that rhymes with Orange?" Come on, dude, tell me what happens next in Ghost IV! I've got the computer right here! I can open the file in a second.

IN: No.

RM: What do you mean, "No?" We've got a deadline!

IN: I don't feel like writing today.

RM: So who's feeling snippy, then?

IN: I'm not feeling snippy, I just feel that the energies aren't aligned right. Your qua is all mixed up with your Fu.

RM: WHAT? What the fuck are qua and Fu? And why is one capitalized and the other isn't? Dude, I need stuff on the series. March, dude. More than a hundred thousand words. We. Are. Running. Out. Of. Time.

IN: Take a shower.

RM: I don't WANT to take a shower.

IN: Get something to eat. Take a shower. It will help you align your qua and your Fu. When your qua and your Fu are aligned, we'll talk.